Gateway NE72206u

While premium laptop can be a reviewer and consumers alike overpowered fancy features and performance, there is a wide segment of consumers who need to fill out some basic computing needs without it costs an arm and a legs. If you need a laptop that lets you browse the Web, work normal office work or school, or sorting through your family photos, the Gateway NE72206u is an affordable system with a decent feature sets. But while it gets the job done for an affordable price, there are other budget-friendly system that offers a little more bang for the buck.

Design and Features
While most budget-priced laptop Moving towards netbook-like designs or smaller form factor tablet hybrid, the Gateway NE72206u is a full-sized desktop replacement laptop, with a wide 17.3-inch display and a hefty seven-pound chassis that measures 1.4 by 16.3 by 10.8 inches (HWD). Probably too big to carry with you on a bus, or carry from class to class, but it will move from room to room just fine.

The aforementioned display offers 1600-by-900 resolution, which is no match for the visual,080-pixel display 1920-by-1 seen in the more expensive 17-inch system. But it is noticeably better than shown in 1366-by-768 seen in most laptops with low-priced, and also offers plenty of room for multitasking and support for 720p video. It is not a touch screen, however. The accompanying audio is lower in quality, with low overall volume and almost no bass.

Leave large size room for a full-size keyboard and numeric pad on the right. The keyboard uses the adjacent key instead of spaced out chiclet design favored by so many manufacturers, and the keyboard can feel a bit cramped as a result. Without backlight, it will not be the best keyboard to use in the dark, but it shows very little flexing, making it one of the sturdier keyboard we've seen in this price range.

The accompanying touchpad supports all types of Windows 8 motion, such as pinch, rotate, and flip, but uses a scrolling strip along the right side of the sensor to scroll up and down (or side to side when the Windows 8 Start Screen). This scroll strip is a bit of a throwback, and adds a complication when doing side swiping gestures, like flicking in from the right to access the Windows button or settings.

On the right side of the chassis is a tray-loading optical drive (DVD ± RW DL), along with a single USB 2.0 port and jacks for headphones and microphone. On the left, two more USB ports (one USB 2.0, one USB 3.0) with HDMI out, VGA out, and Gigabit Ethernet. On the front side of the chassis is a SD card slot. Wireless connections include 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

The NE72206u sports a 500GB, 5,400 rpm hard drive, which may not be cutting edge, but offers more than enough storage space for your collection of family photos and iTunes library. Preinstalled on the trip was a slew of software bundle, from the 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security and Microsoft Office offerings such as Skype, Netflix, and Wild tangent games. Along with its own gateway Recovery Management and Power Management Utility, and covers NE72206u with one-year warranty.